Candidates for sheriff criticize mandatory OT

On Monday, two Democrats vying to replace Bexar County Sheriff Susan Pamerleau cited the same top concern: a sheriff’s office that forces its detention officers to work overtime in exchange for compensatory time that’s difficult to use.

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Javier Salazar blamed the policy for a recent spate of deputy arrests.

Since January, at least 13 deputies have been arrested, according to a previous San Antonio Express-News story. In September, two deputies in separate incidents were charged with driving while intoxicated.

The arrests are “a direct result of morale issues and overworking,” said Salazar, 45, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department. (Salazar’s opinions as a candidate don’t necessarily reflect anyone else’s in the police department, he said.)

“She’s making them work overtime,” Lopez said of Pamerleau, a Republican who retired after 32 years in the Air Force with the rank of major general.

Last year, Pamerleau acknowledged the problem in a bid to county commissioners for more detention officers and $500,000 in cash to pay for an accumulation of mandatory OT hours.

“Our officers are scheduled on a regular basis to work 16-hour shifts,” Pamerleau said then. “That affects things like child care, family responsibilities, part-time jobs and school.”

On Monday, a sheriff’s deputy who declined to provide his name for fear of retaliation told me the problem has persisted.

“Each officer is required to do mandatory overtime,” he said. “After that, they can force you to work an additional day. … You can’t go home and see your kids. You’re stuck in that jail. … They’re getting driven into the ground: overworked, underpaid.”

The deputy also linked the mandatory and forced OT to the trend of officer arrests.

“It’s creating a hardship on our officers,” he said. “They’re stressed out and turning to drinking, and that’s why they’re getting DWIs.”

Pamerleau disagreed.

“I wouldn’t put it to that,” she said. “I would put it to making poor decisions.”

Her opponents are misguided, Pamerleau added, because “they just don’t have the data.”

When Pamerleau took office in January 2013, “we were running 15 and 16,000 hours of mandatory OT a month,” she said. “We brought that down to around 10,000, and by the end of the (fiscal) year, it was down to right around 7,000 hours of mandatory OT per month. We reduced it by over 60 percent that year.”

Last summer, because of a fluctuating jail population, mandatory OT hours spiked again, to about 17,000 a month, she said.

“It’s cyclical,” Pamerleau said. “The commissioners authorize the level of positions that are needed to run a jail of this size based on what the jail population is.”

Currently, the sheriff’s office has accrued less than 3,000 mandatory OT hours a month, she said.

“We manage this every single day,” Pamerleau said, noting that she created 49 new detention officer positions last year.

Neither Salazar nor Lopez would criticize Pamerleau on a separate hot-button topic: her willingness to cooperate with federal immigration authorities by agreeing to detain arrested immigrants beyond their release date.

Gov. Greg Abbott made news last week by calling out the Dallas County sheriff for refusing to comply with the federal immigration detainers.

“I’d comply with whatever is required of me by law,” Salazar said. “You wouldn’t see any ignoring detainers or bucking the law in any way.”

Lopez echoed that.

“If they are illegal immigrants, if ICE requests that we hold them, I would continue to hold them for ICE,” he said.